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What is a Tweet Chat & How Do I Participate?

Hashtags were ‘invented’ as a way for a group of people to follow a single conversation on Twitter. If you’ve ever seen a tweet with # preceding a word, you’ve seen a Hashtag. One of the greatest uses of Hashtags is to create real-time, ad hoc chat rooms called Tweet Chats or Twitter Chats. These are simply one of the best ways to gain value from your Twitter time, especially if you use Twitter for B2B sales prospecting.

Getting Started With Tweet Chats

To start a Tweet Chat, just determine what you want to use as your Hashtag (note, shorter is better because every tweet will carry the tag and the # sign) and share it with your friends or toss it out on Twitter.

Don’t want to host, but still want to play along, then just search Hashtag.org for words that might be in the name of a chat you’d like to sit in on. For instance, if I wanted to learn more about blogging, I might search for ‘blogchat‘ on Hashtags.org.

Now determine how you’ll converse. Using the standard Twitter web interface won’t cut it so I’d suggests you either use a client like Hootsuite or Chat Room specific sites like TweetChat or TweetGrid. If you’re using Hootsuite, you’ll need to create a search column using the # and hashtag conference room name as your search term and you’ll have to remember to type the Hashtag each time you tweet. If you’re like me and you want everything automated, you may want to lean towards TweetChat.

I’ve created a little How To video below to show you how to use both Hootsuite and TweetChat to participate in a Twitter Chat.

Where Can You Find a List of Twitter Chats?

There are lots of different lists available on the Interwebs… so you can just Google Twitter Chat and you’ll find a bunch. But because I’m such a giver, I’ll make it easy on you. Here is a list of Twitter Chats by day of the week. Go over and see if you see one that might prove a target rich environment for you. Yes, you’re welcome.

And that is it. Twitter Chats are all around. I really like BlogChat and TourismChat — for you tourism marketers. But you probably know of a few more…so add them here won’t you? And if you’ve seen a better interface for Twitter Chats, do share? Of late I’ve found some issues with my preferred TweetChat so I’m kind of interested in testing something else out. Let me know.

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About Tom Martin

Tom is 20+ year veteran of the marketing and advertising industry with a penchant for stiff drinks, good debates and digital gadgets that helps digitally challenged companies create innovative and effective digital marketing strategies. He is the founder of Converse Digital , author of The Invisible Sale and a contributing writer for Advertising Age. Tom guides clients through the digital marketing maze and helps companies teach their sales force how to Painlessly Prospect their way to more sales. Connect with him on Google+ or follow him on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Comments

I’m a big fan of tweet chats as well. It’s been the easiest way to connect with folks with whom I could never interact with except for expensive travel and conferences. Not that those are unimportant and don’t have a place, but tweet chats are a good place to start. For me, a tweet chat is like a digital cocktail party. I host one each week Wednesday at 9pm ET called #MobileChat. Cheers!

Thanks for the tip on the mobile chat Patrick — I find night chats hard (given I have 4 kids) but I may have to check that one out as Mobile is always something I’m trying hard to stay on top of for my clients.

I’m a little disappointed to see that the site cost $2 to update a chat. My chat (#RunChat) is listed incorrectly (the date was what we originally had, but changed in 2010). Makes me wonder what other chats might have outdated info. There’s also a Google Doc with a master schedule – http://bit.ly/TwitterChatMaster

Won’t surprise you .. the #soloPR chat is the one I try not to miss. Really it’d be good for almost any independent consultant, very lurking-worthy for anyone in communications, marketing, social. Would love to do more consistently, if only I could make the time. FWIW.

That is a good one. I really need to make myself a calendar and force myself to rotate all the good ones so that I can join at least one a week. I used to do a lot more of that and it really helped me meet new folks, learn new information and generate new leads for my company.

I’m new to Twitter and have a question about this. If I participate in a Tweet Chat, will all my Twitter followers see my activity there on their feeds? If so, will this annoy them? What’s the etiquette here about Tweet Chats?

Thanks for dropping in today. Yes, all of your followers will see your tweets while you’re in a TweetChat. For this reason, some folks will tweet just prior telling their followers to please excuse the volume but they’ll be on a TweetChat. I’ve even seen folks suggest that folks unfollow them for an hour and then follow back. Personally, I think that is overkill. Unless your followers are on Twitter while you’re in the chat, they’re not really going to see a huge volumetric change in their stream.

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[…] to your niche or post can increase visibility with a little research. An alternative method is TweetChats, these hashtag driven conversations are exploding in popularity and are a great way to gain […]

[…] Tweet Chats are a great form of communication. They are a great way to get a lot of people into a similar discussion and organize it all under one #. For those of you who don’t know what a tweet chat is let me explain. A tweet chat is a chat in twitter that people can enter by using the # associated with the chat. The owner of the chat then posses question and you must answer them by using the # associated within the tweet group.I learned that personal branding can be a good and bad thing. I have realized that much of this has to do with your digital citizenship. Your digital citizenship says a lot about who you really are and what you are like. Like Ricks had said in the tweet chat ” Yes because it’s like a mullet. Business in the forefront, party in the back. Let’s potential clients know the real me. “ […]